I can answer your questions on the cost of having coins trackable through Geocaching.com. They require a minimum of 1000 coins, and the cost is $1.50 per coin. Basically, you are looking at $1500 just to have them tracked on GC.com. There is an additional fee of $150 if you want your coins to have their own icon (the latest craze in geocaching). To have numbers engraved on your coins will likely cost around 40 cents each. We just went through this whole process for the New York geocoins which are due out next month. (Pictured at http://www.ny-geocaching.org/)

Since most organizations don't have that kind of funds available, most do pre-sales of their coins. That's what we did in New York. We put 1000 coins up for sale and sold out in 36 hours. That was a new record at the time, but since then, coins have sold out in as little as 2 hours. You really should have no trouble selling the coins - especially if they are trackable.

One of the things I wish we had done differently was to have the design created and the sample coin made before we did the pre-sales. Up to that point, we only had to pay $150 for the die and artwork. We did our presales back in September and just got the sample coin last week. Now it's only 3 weeks until the coins are delivered. I feel bad that people had to wait 3 months from the time they paid before they got their coins. Live and learn.

If you do think about doing a coin, I'd be happy to help out in any way that I could. Plus I could act as your distributor for the US orders so that you don't have to pay for postage for all of them from Canada. Just a thought.

If you decide to track them through your own Website, I could contact Jamie (nfa) who did the NNYGeo coins. I'm sure he'd be willing to share the code with me that he set up for his site, so that would save you lots of work.

Hi guys! Sorry, I didn't have a chance to read the thread until tonight. Although I did read the emails from many of you urging a response.

I guess everyone's waiting for an official okie dokie from the committee. I can't speak for Master Instigator, but personally, I think this is a fantastic idea. Consider this the green light for the use of the MBGA logo. I don't think Daniel would have issue with this, but I will phone him tomorrow to confirm.

At the last meeting we had, we did discuss using Cafe Shops to sell MBGA shwag or having patches made up. Since we are a non-financed association, we were going to wait until the new year to address this.

If one of you would like to head up the ordering and pre-purchasing of coins, go ahead! If you want to contact me at my home email address (dcarrier@autobahn.mb.ca), we can formulate an email to the membership to see if there are other interested parties.

Put me down for at least 10 coins. If they are numbered, and if there are enough coins ordered, I'd like to have coin # 222.

Thanks Dani for your response.Pros n' cons of the Geocaching/MBGA trackable coins for us. 1)cool since they are trackable on our games site 2) highly collectible 3)expensive 4) very tradable 5) part of the coins subculture of Geocaching 6) great swag which will run at a min. worth of 7-8 Canadian 7)will likely purchased by many non-MBGA cachers straight up. 8)not easily left as a calling card/sig. item.Pro's n' cons' of an MBGA/other coin for us 1)Still cool since we could track them ourselves 2)Quite collectible (I've traded with some of the big name cachers for their coins/w. nickels etc. on their initiative) 3)more bang for the buck 4) very tradable if low run 5)part of the signature subculture of Geocaching 7)will likely be collected by those visiting caches but not purchased 8)a great calling card/sig and less expensive gift for newer MBGA members.9)ability to buy MORE to spread around the world.

Our leaning (for our 1st try) would be to stick to pricing out a locally done, locally trackable MBGA coin to see how that would go. This subculture is going crazy right now with coins that have been found in caches by FTFers being sold on EBAY for up to 50-100 U.S. dollars. Giving away an 8 dollar coin only to find it being resold for 80 would make me ill personally. I suppose if someone would front the money for the Geocaching/MBGA coin we'd buy 3-4 but they don't suit our families purpose other than in our coin collection. We're a young family who love this game because it isn't hugely expensive. We do collect signature items from cachers/associations and enjoy it. What I don't understand is why the Canadian coin isn't trackable on Geocaching.com. If it was it would satisfy me. Who did that one? The Calgary ones are neat! They seem to travel well and I've kept one of them when I contacted the Calgary cacher who left it in a cache we found.

What I don't understand is why the Canadian coin isn't trackable on Geocaching.com.

I believe the Canadian geocoin came out before Geocaching.com would allow anyone and everyone to buy tracking numbers to be listed on their site.

The pros/cons you listed for the coins were very good. It really boils down to two options:

1) an expensive geocoin to sell as a collector's item2) an inexpensive signature item that could be left in caches

Either option would be cool and I'd want to order some. If you go with the inexpensive route, I suggest using wooden nickels - they can be made very cheaply. Another option might be poker chips. This pic is a bit blurry, but we had some made up for NYGO which can be seen here:

I personally think that any official State or Provincial geocoin should be trackable on GC.com. By geocoin, I mean the metal ones, not signature items such as wooden nickels or poker chips. But if you go to the expense of getting metal coins made, you might as well pay the additional $1.50 and make them trackable.

To give you an idea on cost, our New York Geocoins cost us $4,700 US for 1000 coins. We sold them for $6 each. We did pre-sales using a PayPal account and were able to easily sell out the coins. That way, we had the funds to pay for the coins upfront, since our Organization certainly doesn't have that kind of cash. There were PayPal fees incurred as well which brought the cost of the coins up to over $5 each. We charged and additional $2 for shipping.

I suggest starting small. Get some signature items made up and see how that goes. Then next year, you may decide to go the geocoin route.

By the way, I'll likely bring my geocoin collection home when I'm there for Christmas if anyone wants to add to their icon list. I have 10 trackable coins so far, and another 20 or so of non-trackable ones. My list can be seen here: http://cointracking.com/public/Junglehair

After doing this for a couple of weeks now I've been noticing different things & just wanted to see if I'm missing anything. Some people use stickers when signing logs while others drop off business cards & there are those that actually sign. I started out signing & now leave a sticker instead. Some stickers have the MBGA logo on them, do we need permission for that? If so can I get it, or is it allowed to be used for that purpose without asking permission? The reason I ask is that I'm travelling the last 2 weeks in September & I think it would be neat for the cache owner to see someone from MB took time to find their cache. Second I noticed for some cache posts some say "This Cache was hidden by a member of the Manitoba Geocaching Association, join now membership is free" is that an ad added every so often or is that something you add yourself when making the post?

There are pros and cons to each method of signing a cache. Handwritten works for all caches. Business cards tend to be annoying for future finders. Stamps are nice, but can leave a mess in wet conditions. Stickers can be nice, but can be troublesome for some log books. So it tends to vary what people use cache to cache and cacher to cacher.

Some stickers have the MBGA logo on them, do we need permission for that? If so can I get it, or is it allowed to be used for that purpose without asking permission?

I don't think we have an official policy in place for the use of the MBGA logo. Probably not a bad idea to come up with something. In the mean time, I don't see a problem with using it to create your own stickers to place in logbooks.

I will suggest to the rest of the Board that we develop a terms of use for the logo. It's allowed for use on your cache listings, as ertyu already pointed out, so it should be fine for stickers too.

I go with the 'signature item, and also sign the logbook' theory. Even if my name was somehow on my signature items, I'd still sign it. From the caches I've placed, one of my favourite things when visiting it is to look through the logbook. Odds are, if someone drops a card in, but doesn't sign the logbook, I might well not notice, and assume they never actually found it.

On an aside note, a version of my signature item also fits in a nano cache! Doubt many others have a nano-accessible sig item

As another note, going back to 1Q4J, having it trackable on your own site I've seen in several occasions (once with army men, once with a coin). Word of advice: if you do this, do NOT require the person register on the site in any way, shape, or form. The coin one did that, and I mentioned in there I'd refuse to pick up or move any other coins tracked by that site (can't remember which). I'm not pumping my email and other info into any random site I come across... and I'm guessing others would think the same. It's an added hassle._________________Ia Numtaru, ia Lammia, ia Asaku, ia Pazuzu.
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